Pandemic Programming: Staged

The Global COVID-19 pandemic in addition to killing more than a million people with over 210,00 of them here in the dysfunctional United States of America, has also wreaked havoc on the entertainment industry. Beyond the shuttering of exhibition houses and live theater around the globe production has foundered on the rocks of this disease. Film and television sets are cramped, crowded affairs with buffet style craft services to keep everyone fed and little ability to engage in social distancing with the results being that making new programing a risky enterprise.

However, a few creatives are finding ways to still give us the entertainment and joyful diversion we desperately need in the dark days and the one I am enjoying best is Staged.

Starring fan favorites David Tennant and Michael Sheen Staged centers on the two actors playing fictionalized and exaggerated versions of themselves as they are trapped in their homes by the pandemic and via Zoom calls attempt to salvage a theatrical production being helmed by a novice and weak first time director played by the program’s creator, director, and writer, Simon Evans.

In addition to Tennent and Sheen their real-life spouses, Georgia and Anna are supporting and engaging characters along with a few guest stars also contributing to the socially distanced project.

Selected scenes are available on YouTube and work quite well on their own but the full half-hour episodes laying on Hulu are the real joy. If you are in need of laughter fueled escape, I couldn’t recommend Staged any higher.

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Voting is Done

Here in California Voting by mail while not universal has been gaining greater and greater acceptance as the nominal method for participating in each election and during a deadly pandemic it makes even more sense. For several election cycles my sweetie-wife and I have been voting by mail simply for the convivence.

One of the advantages of mailing your ballot is the comfort of doing the research at home, making all your notes at home, and then completing the ballot without notes or other aids. It was also a bit of a hassle to carry into the polling location some sort of written guide for all the down ballot offices, judges, schoolboards and the like as well as the lesser known initiatives but statewide and local. Yes the state provides a sample ballot that you can mark ahead of time and that does work, but while standing at the plastic stations where you fill out the ballot I have always felt a time pressure to fill out and submit my ballot and at home no one is waiting to use my desk after me.

So, election 2020 is now in my personal rear-view mirror. I have voted against Trump, Trumpism, and all so have lent it even the barest of support. It is now in the hands of everyone else.

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Activation Energy, Momentum, and the Milliped’s Problem

It seems to me that my writing requires an activation energy that must be met every single time I sit at the keyboard. I want to write, I sit with the intention of writing, but there is always a resistance and it takes an effort of will to overcome that resistance. However, once that has been overcome the writing moves forward without much resistance. It’s the barrier that I have to force myself over but knowing that it is just a momentary barrier makes it one that can be surmounted but never ignored.

In addition to the activation energy to begin writing for the day each project also seems to have their own elements of momentum. At the start of any new project, short story or novel, it is tough getting the story going. The characters kind of mill about in scenes and the scenes feel pointless generating doubt about the entire project. Again, if I push on there comes a moment when the story moves by itself. It is as if I needed to get up to a certain speed and crest a hill but once I do it slides on its own all the way to the end.

On my newest novel I have discovered a new trap, a new hazard to avoid. With the publication Vulcan’s Forge, I received some very nice praise, praise that was unknown by this reader directed at a particular aspect of the SF story that I had worked quite hard at. It was quite a moment of pride to have someone tell me that the elements that really wanted to work had been one of their selling points.

Now I am working a new SF novel and this element again needs careful attention but like the milliped after being asked how it manages to move so many feet perfectly coordinated, I find myself frozen and worried that I’m messing up what I had once done so well.

There’s no cure for this but to work through it and trust myself and my eventual beta readers.

With writing, and all the arts, there are always new barriers to overcome.

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Second Act Troubles

A dissatisfaction with the current progress of Lovecraft Country has me thinking about second act issues. Of course, when I speak of second acts, I am referring to the traditional three act structure that many films and television shows employ even though I myself utilize a five-act structure when building out a novel.

In the three act model the first act is establishment of the characters, the world, and the central conflict of the story. The third act is after all the major revelations and the characters hurtle towards their final conflicts and resolution leaving the second act, which is the same size in term of word or page counts as the other two combines, as a vast middle where advancement and reversal take place as the characters chart the course of the plot. It is not unusual for second acts to become muddled and messy as their purpose doesn’t seem as well defined as acts one or three. This is in part why I like the five-act system instead of one massive poorly defined act there are two with better laid out purposes.

What’s important is that the characters have goal that they have identified and chase that directly immediately impact the story. The second act of Star Wars (A New Hope for you youngsters.) Is the Flacon’s capture, the discovery and rescue of the princess and the escape from the Death Star. At each of the turns we understand exactly what it is the characters need to achieve, the cost of the fail to do that, and the escalation as obtaining the immediate goal brings further problems and troubles.

While things that happen here do affect the third act and the story’s eventual conclusion the characters are not looking off to that distant end but rather dealing with objective that if they do not meet them now there will be terrible consequences.

Keep your second act moving, as the writer keep your eye on the final prize the conclusion, but remember that the characters have to have immediate goals that matter to them now.

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Stop It with The Pan and Scan

Last night my Sweetie-Wife and I decided to watch a streaming film. The first couple of movies she selected from Amazon’s steaming library, we were going to Amazon because their catalog of foreign specialty films seems the best, were unsuitable because they were not available via our Prime memberships and in addition to a rental fee were sourced from 16mm prints. I am never going to pay a rental fee for a low-quality dupe from 16mm.

She advanced that she wanted to see a spaghetti western preferably one with Klaus Kinski a quick search turned up I am Sartana … Your Angel of Death. Okay we gave that one a try.

It didn’t look right.

The original aspect ratio was 2.35 to 1 but that was not the presentation Amazon offered up. In addition, the director or director of photography adored shooting through along zoom lens which magnified camera shake which was additionally magnified by the Pan and Scan alteration. On top of that fast camera movement and frequent transitions to ‘Dutch Angles’ made the experience not simply unappealing but actually headache inducing.

We switched over to Django Defies Sartana which is presented in its original aspect ratio, 1.85 to 1, and taken from a much better source.

In these days of high definition wide screen televisions there is no call for Pan and Scan at all and it should be eliminated.

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Playing Politics with Our Lives

It’s not new or shocking to state that Trump cares for no one but Trump. Those who expect or hope that his brush with COVID-19 and his mortality will somehow implant the barest empathy for another human being are deluding themselves. A person in the mid-70s is set in who that are and in Trump’s case that is an immoral, narcissistic, sociopath interested only in his own well-being and wealth.

In addition to this the pressures of the election and his immunity towards state and federal crimes along with civil threats including $400 million dollars in personal debts coming due in the next four years provide incentive, beyond his inherent selfish needs, for Trump to do whatever it takes to retain the office of President of the United States.

Which of course means interfering in the process the approve the vital vaccine we need for COVID-19.

The FDA wants to publish guidelines that any vaccine before approval must first have its participant monitored for two months following their last does, waiting to see in adverse events develop or if the vaccine’s protections show signs of being only a short duration. This reasonable, if still highly rushed, guideline is quite acceptable unless your eye is on election day in which case this is terrible. No vaccine can meet this guideline and be approved before November 3rd 2020. Of course, interference from the White House undermines confidence in the vaccine and damages intake of this vital measure to protect our health, our lives, and our economy.

Trump doesn’t care if the vaccine works.

Trump doesn’t care if you die.

Trump only cares for Trump.

Trump only wants to win and your corpse is an acceptable price for that victory.

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Lovecraft Country Impressions After 7 Episodes

Lovecraft Country is an HBO limited series adapted from the novel of the same name written by Matt Ruff and centers on a group of Black characters dealing with magic, monsters, and racism during Jim Crow America. Mild spoilers ahead.

The story’s protagonist is Atticus ‘Tic’ Freeman, a Korean War veteran, genre fiction enthusiast, and a descendant of the founding member of cult order.

I have now watched seven episode of Lovecraft Country and my feelings are hopeful but with a dash of apprehension.

The characters are well drawn with complex backstories and vibrant inner lives that all the actors of the series portray beautifully. The drama and dynamics are grounded in a realistic approach with the various character struggling with lingering abuse, trauma, and trust issues while still possessing aspirational motivations that speak to a high nature within them. In the face of a racist, unjust, and oppressive system that surrounds them they maintain, for the most part, their own dignity.

The fantastical elements, monsters and magic, are handled quite adeptly with fresh shocks and turns that has prevented the genre elements from becoming stale even seven hours into the story.

My apprehensions arise from concerns of the course of the narrative and the coming conclusion and break down into two major categories.

First; The lack of direct objectives for the protagonists. Tic, for most of the series now, has been searching for and attempting to decipher pages from a magical text with the goal of protecting his family. But it is not clear exactly what he is protecting them from. While there are evil supernatural forces, and one such force attempted to use Tic as part of a dangerous ritual, the surviving members of the cults do not appear to offer a direct and specific threat to Tic. It is not clear what will happen if Tic fails in obtaining ‘protection’ or what will happen if the surviving cultists are unopposed. This would be fine if we were only 1/3 of the way into the story but at 2/3 we need to have a clear appreciation of the stakes.

While the character drama is proceeding nicely, and the characters are being tested on their inner natures and being forced to change and grow that is sufficient for dramatic fiction but lacking for genre stories. Genre is more plot dependent; we need more than Luke Skywalker gaining maturity we need the defeat of the Death Star as well.

My Second apprehension centers on the thematic elements of the story and specifically with the racism of Jim Crow America. It is good to tell this story set in the Jim Crow period. It is a dark disgusting chapter of American History too often swept aside in popular entertainment. My issues do not arise from setting here and being direct in depicting the overt racism, but I fear the series is setting itself up for an unsatisfactory conclusion.

We know that Jim Crow will not end until the middle of the next decade and that systemic racism will persist after its legal abolition. making it a central thematic conflict in the show without a fictionalized character to stand in for it means that the characters no matter their eventually outcome with the cultists will lose in the greater cultural conflict. This is where having a character stand in for the wider culture is a useful device. A white racist character that comes to see the evil and ignorance of their racism can be used to suggest that cultural change and growth is possible and hinting that victory of those evil forces is possible even if your story ends within racist times but Lovecraft Country has no recurring major racist characters to suggest such a growth is possible. Because the racist characters come and go as part of the universal background the background becomes unchanging and unchangeable.

Perhaps that is the thematic intent of the show’s creators but it is very difficult to make failure and futility into satisfying ends for stories.

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Welcome to October

It would seem that nature, the fates, or God, which force is most prominent in your belief system, has taken a hand in springing an October Surprise into our Presidential election season by infecting President Trump with COVID-19.

It is very tempting to mock and jeer at this news.

Trump’s willful mismanagement of the crisis has left tens of thousands of American needlessly dead. While possessing just about 4% of the world’s population the United States account for about 20% of the pandemic’s death total.

Trump cruelty to those who he sees as his enemies invites other to retaliate with their own cruelty.

His mocking of others with afflictions makes the desire to mock his own nearly irresistible.

I cannot speak for other but for myself I am not Trump and I am a better person than he. I will not mock him. I will not delight in his misery. I will not wish for him a slow painful and terrifying death no matter how poetically ironic it would prove to be.

I will confess to a dark delight that I would love to see Trump survive and then endure a crushing defeat delivered by Team Biden.

I would love to see Biden’s electoral team roll that ‘crit’ and crush the GOP with 400 electoral vote victory. Which according to the projections from the Washington Post’s data nerds is about a 10% chance, making it more likely than a natural ‘crit’ in D&D.

I would love to see a Democratic Tide so high that it washes away Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnel, however unlikely such an outcome is. Only through such a crushing defeat could the GOP be forced to rebuild itself as the sort of respectable conservative party that would be immune to future Trumps and I want Trump to live to see that happen.

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Painful Television

No, I am not referring to the televised US Presidential Debate. I did not watch as I already have more than enough information to make an informed vote. Sadly, I am talking about a Scottish murder mystery limited series Deadwater Fell.

Currently available on the steaming service Acorn but also available as a single stand-alone purchase for the limited series Deadwater Fell is the story of a tragic fire that kills the wife and children of the village local doctor, Tom (David Tennant) and how the fallout from the events splinters the town and relationships.

My problem with the series is I truly disliked spending time with these characters. There is scarcely one that is pleasant, and most are actively abusive and manipulative. While all the characters have big dramatic issue, events, and troubles, the very nature of the characters make me immune to care.

The actors perform their tasks admirably, making these repulsive characters real and I do not hold them accountable for the writing. Though as I said to my sweetie-wife while we were watching the final episode, ‘If I want to watch Tennant being manipulative and evil, I’ll just watch Season One of Jessica Jones.’

In addition to the character abrasive natures the writing also seems to suffer from the author pushing the characters into scene for the audiences benefits rather than from a natural outgrowth of character motivation. For example, Tom, the Doctor, goes to Jess and tells her a sad story of his abuse as a child, as story Jess later learns is a lie. It reveals a bit of Tom’s character and his manipulative nature but Tom going to jess served no purpose for Tom. He wasn’t gaining anything. No cooperation, no item he needed, there was literally from Tom’s perspective, no purpose to do that. It advanced plot and revealed character but only by being out of character.

With less than ten minutes left to the final episode we abandoned the series and played Dominion.

I cannot recommend this series to anyone.

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It’s Good to Have Hope and to be Wary

No, this is not about the Presidential Debate last night September 29th.

The New York Times has an interesting story about a tech start-up in Massachusetts that is raising funds and planning to construct a test reactor for nuclear fusion.

Working with MIT the start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems hopes to have their reactor built in just 3-4 years and if all goes according to their plans producing net gain energy from fusion.

We have seen this road before and it has, to date, only led to washed-out bridge, collapsed tunnels, and chasms yet to be spanned, but things are impossible to achieve until they aren’t. This is not some fly-by-night operation working without the benefit of major scientific and technological might and several physicists have publisher papers agreeing that this approach looks sound.

It may still fail.

It may yet be another crushing disappointment.

It may also work.

We need something like this. While viable fusion power would attract attacks from both the lest and the right it would be a huge leap forward in de-carbonizing our energy systems.

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